Polytechnic students on Tuesday announced countrywide demonstrations for today, protesting against the three-point demand of engineering and technology university students on reforming engineers’ recruitment and promotion in public service.
Polytechnic students, under the banner of Karigari Chhatra Andolan, Bangladesh, termed the three-point demand ‘unreasonable’, ‘harmful to the engineering sector’, and ‘aggressive towards diploma engineers’, and said that they would press for immediate implementation of their six-point demands during today’s countrywide demonstrations.
The platform president Masfik Islam Dewan made the announcement at a press conference at Dhaka Polytechnic Institute on Tuesday.
A government-formed eight-member committee will hold two meetings, one with representatives of protesting students from engineering and technology universities and the other with those from polytechnic institutions, at the public administration ministry today to review their demands.
‘Karigari Chhatra Andolan, Bangladesh is instructing all polytechnic institutes across Bangladesh to hold sit-in programmes at important points in their respective districts tomorrow (Wednesday),’ Masfik told the press conference.
The unreasonable three-point demands of the ‘Engineer’s Rights Movement’, a platform of engineering and technology university students, were raised mainly to pressure the interim government, obstruct the upcoming elections and damage the state’s reform efforts, he alleged.
Students of different polytechnic institutions on Tuesday also staged demonstrations in Dhaka, Thakurgaon, Khulna, Chapainawabganj, Chattogram, Patuakhali, Gazipur and other districts to press home their six-point demands and protest against the three-point demands of the ‘Engineers’ Rights Movement’.
In Gazipur, a group of students of some polytechnic institutions staged a sit-in at the Vuruliya rail gate blocking the railway from 4:30pm to 6:30pm, reported ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· Correspondent in Gazipur.
A group of students of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, on the other hand, at a press conference on their campus alleged that a group of polytechnic students were hatching conspiracy by announcing street protests without solving the issues through discussions.
Polytechnic students began their countrywide demonstrations on April 16 to press home their six-point demand.
The demands include the cancellation of the promotion of craft instructors to the post of junior instructor, cancelling the opportunity to enroll in a diploma in engineering course at any age, designing a four-year quality curriculum based on the model of the developed world and taking legal action against the organisations that are appointing diploma engineers to posts belonging to lower than the 10th grade.
The Engineers’ Rights Movement also launched protest programmes on August 26 to press their three-point demand.
They demanded that all the jobseekers must pass a recruitment examination and hold at least a BSc (honours) degree to enter into the ninth-grade public jobs in engineering.
